With the advent of modern broadcast receivers such as radio and television, a wide variety of program material is continually broadcast over a wide range of different stations. These stations are detected by a large number of broadcast receivers located in automobiles, homes, offices and the like. This wide proliferation of program material has provided a wide variety of listening material, but has also made it difficult for the listener to hear specific desired audio segments.
For example, listeners often develop a fondness for certain musical compositions or songs, but are unable to hear such songs more than a few times each day. Due to the large number of stations available, it is not practical to continually tune the broadcast receiver in order to hear such favorite songs. Similarly, it is often difficult to locate and hear news broadcasts or other programs involving particular personalities, and it is difficult to insure hearing certain disaster warning signals.
A need has thus arisen for a method and system to enable a listener to hear desired audio segments whenever the segments are broadcast, no matter on which station they are occurring. Such a system would require the flexibility of enabling the listener to select any desired audio segment to be subsequently played, whether it be a song, musical composition, news broadcast or the like. With such a system, it would also be advantageous to be able to load in desired audio segments, such as a "top ten song list", from an external source. Thereafter, it would be desirable for the broadcast receiver to automatically detect the occurrence of the desired audio segments and play it for the listener's enjoyment.